Resource identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are persistent identifiers which can be used to consistently and accurately reference digital objects and/or content. The DOIs provide a way for the ADS resources to be cited in a similar fashion to traditional scholarly materials. More information on DOIs at the ADS can be found on our help page.

Citing this DOI

DOIs should be the last element in a citation irrespective of the format used. The DOI citation should begin with "doi:" in lowercase followed by the DOI with no spaces between the ":" and the DOI.

doi:10.5284/1000022

DOIs can also be cited as a persistent link from another Web page. This is done by appending the DOI Resolver with the DOI. This would look like:

http://dx.doi.org/10.5284/1000022

However, if it is possible it is best to hide the URL in the href property of the <a> tag and have the link text be of the form doi:10.5284/1000022. The HTML for this would look like:

Interactive Map:

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Discussion:

Early history of the town

Overton has origins as a settlement well before the end of the thirteenth century. It appears in Domesday Book as a manor, and in the mid-twelfth century was the site of a castle in the hands of Madog ap Maredudd, prince of Powys.[314] In July 1279, Robert de Crevequer at his manor Overton received a charter from the king for a market to be held on Wednesdays, as well as an annual fair on the 'vigil, feast and morrow of the Nativity of St Mary and the twelve days following'.[315] In 1286 Edward granted Overton to his wife, Eleanor, having stayed there himself in September 1283 and October 1284.[316] During the queen's lifetime, before 1290, Thomas le Taverner and Richard de Felton received lands in Overton, but their descriptions seem to relate to large units of property rather than urban plots.[317]

The grant of a borough charter by the king comes in January 1292.[318] It contains the usual privileges, making the town a 'free borough' and 'the men of the said town free burgesses', with their own prison, the right to elect representatives, and a 'gild merchant with a hanse and other customs and liberties thereto pertaining', plus a clause giving freedom to 'any man's bondman' who comes to live there and who remains there 'for a year and a day without being claimed'.[319] In the same year a total of 56 taxpayers were present there, and 12 others in the market, suggesting a distinction between it and the borough.[320] A year later, Reginald de Grey 'was ordered to go in person to Overton to distribute burgages to those who wished to take them up', and 'burgesses were to build houses and live in them on the king's demesne lands', as well as arable land and woods.[321] From these woods 'they shall have the timber... to build their burgages'.[322] Grey was of course himself responsible for founding the new town and castle of Ruthin, in Denbighshire, established a decade earlier,[323] and was therefore no doubt reasonably experienced in handling such matters.

The town was shortly 'badly ravaged' in the Welsh revolt of 1294-5.[324] Expenditure followed on the castle in 1301-2, 'enclosing anew the garden of the Lord Prince of Overton... both with palings and a thorn hedge called Hurzun'.[325] A little later again, in 1309, the burgesses of Overton sent a letter to the king explaining the effects of the revolt, complaining that the Welsh 'ought to rebuild, at their own cost, the king's manor and mills there' but 'have rebuilt nothing'.[326] Subsequently, in 1403, 'Glyndwr put it to flames and virtually destroyed the entire vill, forcing it to be largely abandoned by the English inhabitants', and by the sixteenth century the town had but twenty houses.[327]

Design and plan of the town

The layout of Overton has a curiously complex arrangement of streets. By and large the streets all have quite straight alignments and intersect at right angles, giving the plan an overall regular appearance. But the streets do not form a grid.[328] Instead there is one main street that enters the town from the west then proceeds to zig-zag, first south, then east, then south again. One stretch of this, High Street, is broadened, no doubt accommodating the town's market, and to the east is the church of St Mary, which in 1284 Queen Eleanor 'had commissioned the making of glass windows for'.[329] The church is situated in a street-block bounded on its eastern side by a street set out in parallel to High Street, the alignment of which is continued by town's main street as it exist to the south. The core of the town plan is therefore arranged on a parallel street-system, the northern end of which tapers to a point (Turning Street). West of this is another street-block extending from the High Street and bounded by Wrexham Road, the main road coming from the west, and Willow Street. The depth of this street-block (260 feet/80m) is about the same as the one containing the church between High Street and School Lane, again revealing a degree of regularity in the town plan.[330] However, it is odd though that Willow Street does not line up with Dark Lane on the opposite side of High Street.[331] If it did then Overton's plan would look more like a grid. Another odd mis-alignment is evident at the southern end of High Street, where the road swings on a ninety-degree turn to the east (Pen-y-Llan Street). Here a small lane runs off to the south, but instead of lining up with High Street it diverges off in a dog-leg, and then takes a southerly direction running in parallel to Salop Road. With its funnel-shaped entrance (at the south end of the lane) it looks as if this route was once used as an entrance into the town made to help drive animals into the High Street market place from surrounding pasture land.

So while the plan of Overton's streets look as if they were carefully set out on straight alignments, the streets themselves do not come together neatly or create an overall grid. One reason why the town's streets have this curious arrangement could be to do with Overton's origins, first as a market settlement, then as a chartered borough, the two parts perhaps being physically separated. Alternatively, perhaps the original town plan has been denuded over time, affected by attacks by the Welsh and urban decline during the later middle ages? Certainly the southern end of High Street appears to have few plots by the time of the Tithe Award survey of 1837, in contrast to its northern end. Those plots that are identifiable on nineteenth-century mapping reveal a regular pattern formed by having a common depth, noticeable especially along High Street. These are probably the burgages being allocated by Reginald de Grey in 1293. With their straight boundaries, both at their sides and along the rear, the plots along High Street look as if they were set out to a standard dimension, but if this was the case unfortunately there is no record of what their original dimensions were.

It would seem likely, given their similarly regular forms, that the streets were established along with the plots at the same time, but that the job of allocating the plots as burgages then followed after the borough charter was granted, a task for which Gray was needed. If so, the town was probably laid out just prior to when it was chartered as a borough, in 1292, but after the place became Eleanor's, perhaps around 1290. It was at this time that parcels of land were being gifted in Overton, possibly as a consequence of the site for the new town being prepared. With its curious town plan, it is perhaps not surprising that few parallels to Overton can be found in the layouts of Edward's other towns in Wales. The tapering northern end of the High Street has passing resemblance to the eastern end of Water Street at Caerwys, a new town in the same county as Overton, and likewise founded in the 1290s.[332] The depths of the two towns' street-blocks are also similar - could it be that Overton once had a plan that looked more like that at Caerwys?

The town as it is today

Overton is a small town with a busy main road running through it. Some of the buildings fronting High Street date back at least two centuries according to an archaeological evaluation of the town.[333] The 2001 population stood at 800.

These grants are recorded in charters issues by the king in June 1292 but relate to 'the life-time of Eleanor the late queen'; CChR 1257-1300, pp.422-3. It has been suggested that these plots relate to the new town at Overton; Beresford, New Towns, p.551.

Soulsby, Towns of Medieval Wales, p.211. At this time too Reginald de Grey, 'marching south-west from Rhuddlan, had considerable success in routing out Madog's men from the forests where they had taken shelter', Prestwich, Edward I, pp.223-4.